


a science apart

by perennial



Category: Johannes Cabal - Jonathan L. Howard
Genre: Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-16 06:21:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4614498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennial/pseuds/perennial
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He dreams of her.<br/>She dreams of hell.</p><p>[follows <i>Necromancer<i></i></i>]</p>
            </blockquote>





	a science apart

He dreams of her.

This is irritating. There is only one woman’s face he wants to find in his dreams, and it is certainly not hers. Yet she persists in returning, night after night, vivid and thriving and wrong. Cabal possesses no little skill at cognizant dreaming and is even more annoyed to find he cannot shift her.

He is hardly more than a ghost haunting her dream-life. He watches her read. He follows at her elbow as she walks up and down the brick sidewalks of the little town. He watches the gold cloud of her hair turn to sunlight when she steps outside. She hulls strawberries and hands him the green heads to discard. She kisses her father on the cheek and sets the table for three. She never speaks.

—

Leonie dreams of the devil. She dreams of despair and terror, of darkness and fire, of agony without respite.

She dreams that she is trapped in an hourglass that melts into scalding liquid glass, which turns into a river that sweeps her down into the inferno. She dreams she is dangling off a ledge, clutching Johannes Cabal’s wrists; he flings her into the abyss. She dreams she is an old woman on her final day on earth, scrabbling desperately, uselessly, to climb back up the incline of her life, away from the greedy hands of the Prince of Hell, who eagerly watches her descent.

He wants to hurt her. He wants her to hurt.

Satan's visage is one of cunning, of cruelty, of insanity. When he opens his mouth it is full of rot. When he speaks the air turns black with poison. His eyes flare with delight as he carves up her body with a dull scythe, smiling wider at her screams.

—

Cabal knows dreams and their world, so he knows that when she walks through his mind she is not really there, and he knows that what grips his heart at the sight of her is as real as his ability to fly when in the land of the wakened. So he permits it to roost, decides to enjoy it as a fiction created by his overactive mind—a creative outlet of sorts. Sometimes he is able to manipulate the setting: the window frames they paint are those of his own house. Sometimes he incorporates his own preferences: the tea they drink is a blend of his own design.

During the day he finds himself liable to distraction, wonders if this is the first sign of senility.

—

Every night she wakes screaming. Her father has begun sleeping on a cot in her room, and he shakes her awake as soon as he hears the slightest whimper, but more often than not she doesn’t return to full consciousness until she is shrieking and sobbing. Frank holds her until her eyes are dry, but it will be much longer before she stops shaking.

She dreads going to sleep and exhausts herself in the effort to stay awake. Her nightmares haunt her waking hours; she has no appetite. Every morning the sun greets a face grown more wan, a frame grown more gaunt.

After two months of this, her father says: “Enough.”

—

Cabal shuts the door in their faces.

Frank hammers at the wood with a fist like a sledgehammer. He threatens to tear the house apart piece by piece. The fairies in the garden hear the truth vibrating through this pronouncement and scream with glee. They were repulsed by the evil emanating from Leonie’s mind, but they will accept a good show in lieu of supper.

The necromancer opens the door.

“It has not penetrated her heart,” Frank says, “but it will, given time.”

Leonie looks old. Her bloom is gone. She is dying, Cabal realizes.

“This is not my fault,” he tells them.

“I don't care,” says the father.

Frank is permitted into the front parlor but no further. Leonie follows Cabal downstairs, where he begins assembling various materials on the marble slab that serves as a worktable; he has another made of wood and one made of iron, but the first would be too absorbent and the latter too repellent for his current purposes. She watches him quietly.

“There is nothing tried or true about what I am about to do,” he tells her. “It is as likely that this will kill you as cure you. Are you ready?”

“Either way leads to freedom,” she answers. Her voice jolts through him, unheard for so long, the tones of it forgotten. She is Leonie Barrow, burning hot and bright as the sun. She is Leonie Barrow, only.

Then the echoes fade and her body lay on the marble as though ready for burial.

Cabal has to push many memories away before he can work.

The first attempt has no effect. Neither does the second, third, fourth. Finally, hours in, he tells her to fall asleep.

The dullness of her eyes is immediately shot through with fear. He explains: the nightmares must be present to be gathered. They must be extracted, and how can he extract something that does not exist? One drinks water, not mist.

“What are you going to do with them?” she asks.

“Release them,” he answers, surprised.

“ _No_ ,” she says. “If the best you can do is let them run riot, I’ll keep them to myself.” She looks at him. “Safely contained.”

But _you_ aren’t safe, he nearly says. He catches himself, but she reads it in his face all the same. She frowns, startled, and he looks away.

“I will find a vessel for them.” And then she wants to know what vessel, which annoys him because he has no answer as yet, and he tells her to shut up and stop questioning practices of which she has no respect or understanding, to which she tells him that she won’t be turned into an experiment and that those who dabble in dark arts really ought to be prepared for contingencies. The word ‘dabble’ turns him stony and silent, and he briefly wonders how badly it would pollute the garden to tell her to end her misery at the claws and teeth of the fairies.

“Go check on your father,” he says instead. “He is probably worried.”

She gives this display of consideration a curious look, but goes upstairs as suggested.

He stares at the scrolls and tomes scattered around the lab. Somewhere in them are detailed instructions on how to build a vessel to hold nightmares from hell, and he already knows it will not work. He already knows what vessel he needs, and it is not one man can make. Nor is the method one Leonie will condone.

He needs a body. Not a carcass, or the nightmares won’t bond to their new host. Not a living body—this is Leonie’s sure stance. No kidnappings, no scapegoats, and no murders. That leaves him one option.

The thought is crippling. He knows how to fail—failure has been his faithful companion these many years—but the idea of surrender is the equivalent of a personal enemy. To give up, to choose to fail, to have nothing to show for so many years of searching and learning and suffering and waiting: the idea is ludicrous! He cannot do it, and he won’t!

His pride stands up before a memory of golden hair in the sunlight, and is vanquished.

Pride’s vacancy is immediately filled. Grief and loss rock him. He crumbles, pressing his fists to his sternum, crying out in pain. His heart is being ripped in half, slowly and without mercy.

To lose _her_ , after all these years—to finally shut her body in the ground and let it merge with the dirt—to choose it, and never be able to take it back, no matter the outcome—to give her such a farewell as _this_ —can he bear to do it?

Perhaps it was all for this, comes a whisper through his mind. Perhaps it has all been leading to what is happening right now.

“Johannes?”

He looks up. Leonie stands in front of him. Her mouth is slightly parted and concern has softened her eyes. She holds a teacup resting on a saucer and the scent of the drink weaves through the air to his nose. He has never believed that déjà vu is merely a sensory malfunction of the neural system, and now he wonders again what it really is. He thinks that—perhaps—right now—all it is is what it needs to be, which is an assurance. An imprecise, elusive one, but a beginning.

He stands and accepts the cup and saucer. “Thank you,” he says. “Let’s get started.”


End file.
